Roadmap – to phase out ‘animal testing’ – is launched
We are pleased to announce we have published our ‘Roadmap to phase out animal testing’.
Posted 03 Dec 2024
Posted on the 23rd February 2012
With the British Horseracing Authority (BHA) having this week completed an almost total retreat from the strengthened whip rules it introduced four months ago, the case for an outright whip ban is stronger than ever. Towards that end, a new international initiative has been launched, spearheaded by Animal Aid. It was the British group’s campaigning on the issue for more than a decade that was a key factor in the BHA’s decision to introduce the significantly strengthened whip regulations and penalties in October 2011.
The new initiative already has the support of animal advocacy groups in Australia, France, Germany and the Republic of Ireland – countries in which there are strong horseracing industries.
Each of the groups is launching, via its website and through the media, a bespoke version of a hard-hitting and witty new viral film, Whipping Hurts (watch the UK version of the film) produced by Animal Aid. The film’s central theme is that, despite repeated industry claims to the contrary, the whip does hurt horses and should be banned1. Just 44 seconds long, the film shows the tables being turned on a self-satisfied winning jockey just as he is collecting his prize.
The international movement to ban the whip includes the following groups: RSPCA, Animals Australia, Coalition for the Protection of Racehorses [all of Australia], Vier Pfoten [of Germany], Animal Rights Action Network (ARAN), National Animal Rights Association (NARA) [of the Irish Republic] and L214 [of France]. Also part of the international campaign is Concern for Helping Animals in Israel (CHAI), an organisation that has campaigned, successfully so far, to prevent the introduction of horse racing to Israel.
The alliance plans further initiatives, and information and resource sharing.
The BHA insists, falsely, that a whip ban cannot be implemented in Britain in isolation because of the international nature of the racing scene. In fact, Norway outlawed the whip, except for genuine safety reasons, in 1982, and this has not stopped jockeys and horses from Britain and other countries continuing to race on its premier racecourse, Ovrevoll. Members of the new anti-whip alliance, nonetheless, judge that a campaign with an international dimension will hasten the end of the use of the whip as a device to bully and punish horses.
Already, prominent racing industry figures have asserted that the days of the whip in racing are numbered. 2, 3 At an April 2010 conference in Australia, Louis Romanet, former director-general of the body that runs French racing, predicted that, within the next five years, major racing nations would ban jockeys from using the whip to encourage horses to go faster.
In their more guarded moments, jockeys and other industry figures avoid any suggestion that horses are beaten to make them run harder. Instead, they recite the ‘official’ line that the whip is used for ‘safety’ or for ‘correction’4. This explanation is offered even though the majority of strikes against horses come at the end of a race when riders are wild with ambition to win, and are beating their horses to try to achieve that objective. Leading jockey Ruby Walsh this week spoke in plain terms about the real purpose of the whip when he declared: ‘We need the whip to ride them to encourage them to go faster’5(even though the evidence indicates that whipping confers no such advantage6).
The public understands the true function of the whip, which is why, according to a recent poll commissioned by the BHA itself, 57 per cent of people in Britain want an outright ban.7 The new alliance echoes that straightforward objective: the whip hurts; ban it.
Says Animal Aid Director Andrew Tyler:
‘Members of the new international campaign reflect public opinion in calling for an end to the use of the whip to bully and intimidate horses into running up to and beyond their physical limits. The racing industry in Britain thinks that it has dealt with this issue by, essentially, tearing up the rule book. But it will not go away. All the signs indicate that the whip will be banned. We are simply determined that this day will come sooner rather than later.’
We are pleased to announce we have published our ‘Roadmap to phase out animal testing’.
Posted 03 Dec 2024
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